Tuesday, April 03, 2007

I'm working a few posts that need a little more time. For now, a few blog updates. I've made some minor changes to this blog, and will be making a few more. I removed the email subscription option since it was ugly and nobody seemed to be using it. I'm adding a subject grouping which should be done this week after I go back and attach subjects to each post. Look for some other minor changes over the next week or two.

I'm sorry to see that Pentrino VI at The Unofficial Intel Blog appears to have moved on. He preceded me with an external Intel blog and did a nice job. I'm sorry to see him gone. I don't have any other information, but wanted to thank him for his blog and wish him well.

I'm working on a Q1 earnings post to talk about the quarter, products, and other related matters. Some recent news that may impact earnings: Intel got back $275M from the IRS this quarter based on the results of an audit. Assuming the accrue this in Q1 that could give us a little boost. Intel also announced more details the upcoming Penryn and next year's Nehalem processors. There's some opinion out there that Intel's processor designs are copying those of AMD. (There are no comments that Intel is stealing anything, just that design ideas, such as integrated graphics, are coming from AMD first). I seriously doubt that Intel is following AMD's path, but we'll see where this news goes.

On the AMD comment, I did a little reading. Some people are making the case the Intel is copying some of AMDs moves. Given all the bright people working on Intel designs, it seems unlikely nobody would have ever thought to combine graphics functions on a CPU before. AMD may have been the first to announce it, but the idea could have hardly been original. If Intel needs to move faster or differently to stay competitive, isn't that good for everyone? For most of the last 5 years Intel has been playing catch up on processor performance. Now that Intel CPUs are clearly back on top it seems that people need to find some reason for AMD to still be ahead.

I'm not sure what to say about Joshtrino. These rumors tend to have a life of their own. However, I've never the two of them in the same place at the same time...